The future of Google's
image search in Germany

The German Federal Supreme Court has
ruled that Google’s image search results do not infringe
copyright law. So displaying thumbnail images is legal! So far
we only have the
press release. It is not quite clear yet, how the court
reached that decision. The main reason for the finding was that
the suing artist had not used a simple technical measure (robots.txt)
to stop Google from indexing his website. Judging from the press
release und contrary to some news reports the court did not find

that this amounts to consent to the
use of images, but instead came up with another legal twist. But
we wont know for sure untill we have the reasoning of the court.

The verdict is also
not the end of the discussion about Google Image Search in
Germany. There is another case pending in Hamburg, in which a
work has been published online by third parties without the
artist’s permission. Following the reasoning of the ECJ AdWords
decision, the German Federal Supreme Court hinted that Google
could only be liable if it was informed of the copyright
infringement and did not act.